Posts Tagged ‘SSI’

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The trick of using high prices to imply high quality goes back a very long way in digital wargame publishing. Computer Bismarck, the title that launched the genre in January 1980, was advertised as “the $2160 wargame” ($60 for the software, $2100 for the Apple II Plus necessary to run it). SSI proudly proclaimed their creation was “worth every cent” of this princely sum. Whether you ended up agreeing with them depended largely on how much you valued novelties like artificial opposition and effortless fog of war, and how ready you were to overlook design quirks like an onerous interface, an absence of alternative scenarios, and a monstrously magenta North Atlantic. Read the rest of this entry »

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GOG are still capable of serving up a dangerous dose of nostalgia from time to time. Three releases yesterday all gave me reason to reflect on sometimes misspent and sometimes well-spent youth. The game I remember as Stronghold has been released as D&D Stronghold: Kingdom Simulator, presumably to avoid Firefly-related confusion. Then there’s Al-Qadim: The Genie’s Curse, a D&D-inflected Arabian Nights puzzle-adventure. And, last but not least, Starship Titanic, the game wot Douglas Adams did.

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Youths, I know you do so enjoy disrespecting your elders, lingering outside the bowls club drinking Four Loko and ‘ironically’ listening to Barry Manilow. You can now up your rebellion by playing some of the ancient RPGs that fogies swear are better than games you herberts enjoy, then use that experience as inspiration for cutting subtweets.

Fogies, weren’t things better back in the day? As the saying goes, you can’t spell “progress” without “regress” if you’ve lost your glasses and your memory’s going. Relax. From today, you can easily revisit The Golden Age of RPGs. GOG have dug up thirteen old Dungeons & Dragons RPGs in the Forgotten Realms setting, you see.

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When Computer Ambush finally departs for that cherub-garrisoned VL in the sky, it can expect a star-studded send-off. If Close Combat, X-COM, Commandos, and Men of War aren’t amongst the pallbearers, I’ll be disappointed.

While the majority of his trailblazing contemporaries were focussing on naval skirmishes (limited computing power made wet warfare particularly attractive in the early days of PC wargame design) SSI‘s Ed Williger was bravely attempting to digitize squad-level WW2 urban combat. The result, Computer Ambush (1980), was flawed but breathtaking. Thirty-five years on, fighting your way through the game’s shell-ravaged French town is still a bally exciting business. Read the rest of this entry »

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Three of PC wargaming’s most succulent fruit reached ripeness in the same fortnight in autumn 1997. Having featured Sid Meier’s Gettysburg! and Close Combat 2 in the last two Heavily Engageds, it only seems right that the subject of this week’s rumble reportage is the third of the trio. Beyond the jump is a world of hard-won hexagons, coveted core units, and tight timetables. Ready a salute, you are about to enter the command tent of Panzer General 2. Read the rest of this entry »